House may give Utah extra seat; Sen. Orrin Hatch now fights it

WASHINGTON — After more than a year of delay, the House is expected to vote this week on a bill that could give Utah an extra House seat in elections this year.

But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Thursday that the compromise version the House is now proposing is unconstitutional because it would allow Utahns each to vote for two House members this year, and he vowed to filibuster it to death if it returns unchanged to the Senate for a vote.

The legislation would next year expand the House by two seats, giving one seat with full voting rights to the heavily Democratic District of Columbia. As a political counterbalance, it would give the other seat to heavily Republican Utah, the last state to miss out on an extra seat after the 2000 Census.

The extra seats for D.C. and Utah would exist only until the 2012 elections, when the House will be redistricted according to results of this year's census. But D.C. would retain the right to a permanent House seat with full voting rights.

Hatch is upset with a provision in the House bill calling for Utah to elect the extra House member it would be given this year through an at-large seat, where the entire state would participate, rather than letting Utah draw up four districts.

"Utah deserves an additional seat in the House, but like every other state, it should have the freedom to elect its House members from regular districts," Hatch said Thursday,

He said using an at-large seat violates constitutional standards calling for equal representation by allowing Utahns each to vote for two House members — one in their existing district, plus one in the new at-large seat.

"Under the House bill, one House member from Utah would have three times as many constituents as the others, and each Utahn would have twice the House representation as any other American. The solution to this ridiculous confusion is simply to let Utah elect its House members its own way," Hatch said.

However, in House hearings last year, some civil rights and Democratic leaders worried aloud that Utah might be tempted to draw districts in a way to eliminate the Utah delegation's lone Democrat, Rep. Jim Matheson, and hurt his party.

Utah officials have said they would like to use a four-district plan drawn a decade ago, and Matheson has said he is willing to take any district.